Avatar: Here Be Dragons
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: "Here be dragons." It was a phrase dating back centuries, confined to the edges of the map. It wasn't really a phrase that applied to travelling across star systems, but still...


**Here Be Dragons**

The reason why so much starship manufacturing was carried out on the moon was the same reason why Ryder hated being on it – the low gravity.

There were other reasons of course. The moon had the resources Earth lacked, and if they needed to be brought in from further afield, Luna was a better pitstop than Earth. Also, even without the tyranny of distance, it was easier to get more out of your workers beyond Sol III. NGOs could make a fuss about workers' rights on Terra Firma, but how many of them were willing to travel off-world to make a fuss was another matter. But at the end of the day, it was easier to build ships on the moon because of low gravity, and the only better place you could build one was in space itself. And while that remained true for capital ships, for smaller ones, the moon was the place to do business.

And he hated it. He hated the feeling of knowing that his bone marrow was disintegrating. That his muscles were atrophying. He hated the constant feeling of walking on ice, that he could slip up any moment. He hated himself that he was still part of the RDA after all the shit that had been done, that _he'd _done, under its flag. And in spite of all that, he hated that despite all the reasons life sucked on Luna, that it was still much, _much _better than life on Earth was right now.

Well, at least this part of it was, he reflected, as he exited the tube towards Bay 8. Maybe it was better to say that life was better here, but how that applied to the other side of the moon, or Mars, or the Belt stations, he couldn't say. Still, he got two meals a day, both of which had flavour packs to go with the algae, and as a lieutenant, he was allowed a synth steak every two weeks. That was more than most of the people here got.

"Well well, look who it is, Able Ryder back from the ball.""

_Oh hell. _He looked up at the gangway and saw Holden there, standing above him. "Cinderella gets back from the ball. Prince is the one who goes looking for her."

"Yeah? You still looking for your princess?"

The words cut deep. And even if Ryder doubted that Holden knew how deep, the foreman had made no secret of his discontent towards SecOps, or that one of their number had been sent to inspect his work every second day. Sad little fact of the matter was, if Holden had been in SecOps, Ryder could have sent him back to Earth faster than it took to fill out the paperwork. Still, Holden wasn't SecOps, and Ryder's authority didn't extend that far.

"Anyway, sure pal, let's get it over with. You're probably aching in those glass slippers of yours."

Didn't extend that far _yet_, Ryder reflected. Nevertheless, he walked to the ladder that led up to the gangway Holden was standing on. In the moon's low gravity, he was able to jump up a quarter of the way, and quickly climb up the remaining rungs. Kind of like a monkey…y'know, the ones who were found in what few wildlife sanctuaries remained in Africa, not to mention the world.

"Nice," Holden said, as Ryder reached the top. He clapped his hands in mock applause. "One day you'll be able to jump up the whole way."

"Maybe. And who knows? I might be able to uppercut someone there as well."

Holden wasn't deterred. "Yeah, sure." He sighed, and took off his gloves before wiping his forehead. "Fine. Here's your baby. Same as she was two days ago."

Ryder didn't regard the craft as his 'baby.' Then again, maybe that came from watching the feeds too much. You could only see so many images of starving children before the thought of having your own seemed like a bad idea.

"Lieutenant Ryder, I present to you, the C-22 Sea Dragon. Again."

Ryder didn't say anything. He just stood there, looking down at it.

It was situated in a pool of water, said water having been pumped from the moon's south pole. It was about halfway done, but even to the untrained eye, a person could see the resemblance to the traditional C-21. Same length, same height, same overall design. The turbofans that kept the Dragon aloft had been replaced by propellers, but even then, the similarity was there. All that was missing were the automated guns and missile launchers. Weapons which Ryder knew would come in the specs eventually, though towards the end of the vehicle's production cycle. A cycle that he knew had to be meet, or it just wouldn't be Holden's head that would roll.

"So, er, we done?" the foreman asked. "Ultrasound? Clapping nurse, choosing a name for your baby?"

Ryder glanced at him. "You're awfully concerned about children Holden. Something I should know?"

"F…" Holden took a breath. "No sir. Nothing at all sir."

_When have you ever called me sir? _He decided not to rub it in, but instead get on with the job. "Probably sick of hearing this Holden, but I'm obliged to remind you that the Sea Dragon needs to be ready in the next nine months."

"I know, I know, we're on a deadline."

"We are," Ryder said. He nodded towards the thick, concrete ceiling of the bay, designed to protect the staff from everything from meteor impacts to the constant barrage of radiation. "You know what's up there Holden. You know it launches in a year."

"Yeah, I know, ISV _Heinlein_. Moon's a harsh mistress and all that."

If it was a reference, Ryder didn't get it. Instead, he said, "actually the Company's a harsh mistress." He looked around the bay; the C-22 was the main attraction, but there were other ones too. Vehicles, mostly, designed for deployment on Pandora. All of them designed for "reconnaissance in force." As if the people here were too stupid to understand what that meant. As if people were ignorant as to what was going to go down within the next half decade.

"Well…" Holden said, putting his gloves back on. "You er, got anything else to do? Or can I get back to it?"

Ryder wasn't listening. His thoughts were elsewhere, four light years away. People weren't stupid, he told himself. Desperate. Greedy. Selfish. But not stupid. Anyone with half a brain knew what losing Pandora meant to Earth. They'd known it for half a decade, and had had to live with it over the next few years. It was why economic activity on the moon had shot up so much, as helium-3 mining picked up in a desperate attempt to power Earth's fusion reactors. An attempt that Ryder knew couldn't work indefinitely for 20 billion people. Earth's ecosystems had reached terminal point in the mid-21st century, and had outright collapsed at the dawn of the 22nd. Humanity had been able to keep its head above the rising seas for only so long. Seas that were bereft of any life larger than the palm of his hand. The irony of the C-22 was that it was designed for alien seas, teeming with life, while the seas of Earth had no life left in them for people to study.

Or shoot at.

"Hey!" Holden yelled. Ryder looked at him. "You staying or leaving? Because you're not my type, just so you know. Flattered, of course, but…"

Ryder sighed. "Get to work Holden." He began climbing down the ladder. "Just get it done."

* * *

"Just get it done."

Ryder stared at the administrator. "You're bullshitting me, right?"

Ngouchi glared at him. "I assure you, Lieutenant Ryder, that I am not bullshitting."

"Right, of course," he murmured. "Just checking."

In spite of the weight of her demands, Ryder found his gaze drifting to the porthole of the administrator's office. Before him was the lunar surface, halfway through its day cycle. The ground was a sickly golden colour, reminding him that if he stepped outside without a suit, he'd burn to death before asphyxiating. A death that he couldn't be sure would be better or worse than the whole choking to death thing. He hadn't seen soldiers burn to death, but he'd seen them choke. It wasn't pretty.

"Lieutenant?"

He looked back at Ngouchi and frowned. "I understood that launch was in nine months' time."

"Timetable's been moved up. The _Heinlein _is deploying in five months."

"You have a ship that can travel at four fifths of the speed of light, and you think that a few months is going to make a difference?"

"Watch the news Mister Ryder. You tell me."

Ryder didn't say that he did watch the news. That he did know what the difference was. What he also didn't say was that he was almost beyond caring. Earth had too many people consuming too much, and that had been the state of affairs for nearly two centuries. By cold calculus, something had to give. And if the history of the planet had taught him anything, it was that the Earth tended to survive while the life crawling over it didn't.

"You told the workers about this?" he murmured.

"Of course. They're threatening to strike."

"And SecOps does, what? Bring them into line?"

"That, or send them in the next shuttle home.' Ngouchi leant back in her desk, pressing a pen against both of her hands. "There's no shortage of labourers who are willing to take their place."

He forced a smile. "Of course."

"Good. Then we're at an understanding."

Perhaps, Ryder reflected. There was the lingering question of why Ngouchi wasn't heading up the return mission to Pandora rather than Selfridge, because she was certainly enough of a hardarse. But then, despite being among the few survivours of Quaritch's ill-fated assault on the Tree of Souls, he'd somehow been promoted to lieutenant, and given orders to ship back to the moon with the _Heinlein_. Experience, he wondered? Certainly his record was complicated enough, what with Falco and the Well of Souls.

_And Kendra…_

"You're still here lieutenant." Ngouchi was typing on her terminal, but her right eye was slanted towards him.

"Yeah. Still here. Somehow."

"If you want to trade war stories, do it with your own mercs."

"Actually there's not too many of them left to do that. Guess that's why I'm an L.T., and why Selfridge is leading the mission instead of you."

There was a glint in Ngouchi's eye, and he smirked. Nevertheless, he got down to it. "Why the Sea Dragon?" he asked.

Ngouchi shoved the terminal aside. "Excuse me?"

"Why the Sea Dragon? I mean, I get it, reconnaissance in force. We're going in with the slogan of 'yeah, we're back to steal your stuff, and if you don't like it, tough shit.'" Ngouchi opened her mouth to protest, but he continued. "Why the Sea Dragon though? What's so important about Pandora's seas?"

"We're covering all avenues," Ngouchi said. "Land, air, and this time, sea. We're going back, and we're going to establish a long-term presence. The Sea Dragon is there to account for the eventuality of deep-sea exploration."

Ryder smelt the B.S. even before Ngouchi started talking. The answer had clearly been rehearsed. Rehearsed so well that it wasn't even really an answer at all. If he were a journalist, he might have pressed for answers. Still, he held his tongue.

"Anything else?" the administrator asked.

"No ma'am. Nothing." He headed for the exit, but lingered, and looked back at her. "Forewarning though. If you're going to push the workers, there's going to be blowback."

Ngouchi gave him a rare smile. "Of course there will be. Why do you think I summoned you here?"

* * *

_Why do you think I summoned you here? _Ryder grit his teeth. _Go to hell you sanctimonious bitch._

One week had passed since that conversation. One week of chaos, as workers refused to do the overtime without the pay. Some refused to do the overtime at all. They were already working six days a week, 52 weeks a year, they weren't going to do seven. When one of the SecOps grunts had pointed out that moon days weren't the same as Earth days, one of the workers had broken his nose with a hammer. In the ensuring fight, that worker had ended up with a bullet to his stomach and died shortly afterwards. Ngouchi was still in command of the base, officially, but was calling the shots from a different complex. Ryder was reporting to a General Ardmore, but here and now, chain of command meant nothing. The base was in lockdown. Workers were in lockdown, but the brig wasn't large enough to contain them. So what had followed was a standoff between those with the tools, and those with the guns, as the precious weeks slipped away.

So here he was. In a room with a wooden table and a holo-tank, meant for RDA shareholders. Just him, Holden, and nothing else.

"Y'know," said the foreman. "I kind of miss our old meetings."

Ryder said nothing.

"Boring? Yes. Tedious? Yes. But they had a charm. I did my job, you told me to do my job, then I got on with my job."

"The RDA wants you to keep doing that," Ryder murmured.

"Yeah?" Holden asked. "Then they can have it done under the old schedule. Nine months, six days a week. That was the contract me and my workers signed up for."

"You know they can just bring in new workers, right?"

"Yeah? Then why haven't they done so?"

There were two possible answers, Ryder reflected. One was that they were on the verge of doing so. The other was that they needed Holden and his men. Experience, and all that. Same boat he was in. He didn't voice either of those answers though, which gave time for Holden to walk around the table, tracing a grease-stained finger over it.

"This real wood?" the foreman asked.

"Yep."

"Must have cost a fortune. Didn't think there were enough trees left for that sort of thing."

"Actually it's from Pandora." Ryder took a seat at the head of the table. "Little gift for the shareholders. Way of saying thank you for financing the initial expedition half a century ago."

Holden smiled. "Bet those shareholders are regretting their investment."

"Probably not. Even if the RDA's stock tumbled, they're probably among the richest men and women in the world. In the trillionaire class even. Y'know, the type of people who live in the domes."

Holden didn't say anything, but the look on his face told Ryder that he knew. That he also might have known that there was a time where the idea of there even being trillionaires was obscene, but that in this day and age, where 5% of the world's population controlled 90% of the wealth, it was an accepted part of life.

"Anyway," Ryder said. "I'm just the messenger boy, not the negotiator. Though General Ardamore has ordered me to expedite things."

"By negotiating?"

"No. By messaging. You're the head of this little insurgency Holden, so the powers that be want to go through you." He smiled, seeing the look on the foreman's face. "Don't worry, I'm not talking about assassination."

"Bribery, then?"

"Bribery is such a harsh word." He began interfacing with the table's holographic buttons. "I prefer the phrase expedited negotiation."

An image of a woman appeared. And what little colour there was in Holden's face.

"Maria Holden," Ryder said. "Your wife, I believe."

Holden glared at Ryder. "You son of a-"

"Seven months pregnant as well." He smiled. "I always wondered why you kept going on about babies for so long. Now I know."

Holden began walking towards him. "Ryder, if you-"

"I'll make things simple, Mister Holden. Get your men to agree to the new contract, and your wife and baby to be get to come live at Nearside. You refuse, and you might find that life gets even more difficult for them."

Holden stopped moving towards him. Ryder kept smiling, even if his heart was breaking. He hated this. He hated that the RDA had put him in this position, he hated that he'd gone along with it, and he hated that he had to act like he was actually enjoying this. It was one of many compromises he'd made over the course of his life. All in a long chain that humanity had over its existence, rationalizing away their actions as the world died around them. It was a chain that had led humanity and the RDA to this position. Where 20 billion people were on the verge of starvation. And where an alien species was going to once more pay the price for humanity's inability to live in peace with its homeworld.

"Nearside," Holden murmured.

"Any one of a number of domes," Ryder said. "Farside is for the RDA, but Nearside isn't without their touch either."

Ryder could see Holden thinking about it. Nearside and Farside were shorthand for the two sides of the moon – the side that was always facing Earth, and the side that looked out into space. The RDA had dibs on the latter, making the most of its battered landscape after billions of years of bolide impacts. Those who lived and operated on the moon lived on the side facing Earth. In some cases, there were entire generations of Lunarites. People who'd never be able to live on Earth due to the effects that gravity would have on their bodies, but people who, in many cases, had a better life than Terra Firma could provide.

"Think about it," Ryder said. "But make it quick. We're all on a deadline."

"Yeah," Holden murmured. "Maybe I will."

* * *

Holden had thought about it for less than a week before work resumed. The ones who'd followed him were back to working seven days a week, but they had paycheques to go with it. Those who'd followed were sent packing with severance packages large enough to get them to places on Earth that were just shy of being hellholes. The workers the RDA had brought in had filled the gaps, called "Dusters" by the workers who'd claimed to have stood by their principles. People who had come to settle in the dust of the moon, and were no better than dirt. Their employers hadn't cared though. Labour was labour. And in an economy such as this, where societal collapse was one step away, and automation had been a thing for a century, then a job was a job.

Ryder was back at Bay 8, looking at the C-22. He hadn't talked to Holden since their meeting. Holden had talked to people from HR, but otherwise, they'd remained silent. A week on, and he could see that progress had been made. Five more months of this, followed by five years of interstellar travel, and then whatever came next.

"Here be dragons," he murmured.

"Pardon?"

He looked at Ngouchi. She was wearing her prim business suit, despite the environment. "Here be dragons," he repeated.

"I don't follow."

"Something that appeared on the maps of explorers hundreds of years ago," he said. "Here be dragons. A warning against going into the unknown, before the gaps on the map were filled in." He looked back at the C-22. "Can't help but be reminded of them."

"Because it's a submersible?"

"No. Because we're going back to a place where we shouldn't be." He looked at Ngouchi, waiting for a response. Some threat, some reminder of loyalties, or something. Instead, he got nothing but her looking away and a brush of her hair.

"You know I'm right," Ryder continued. "Blank edges of the map are filled in. Dragons disappear. Lands are discovered with people already living there. Do I have to describe what happened to them?"

She looked back at him. "What do you want me to do, Ryder? Dismiss you? Say it'll all work out in the end? I may as well remind you that the door's still open." She drew herself up, and given her increased height from her lunar upbringing, that was quite a difference. "You're going. You've fought the na'vi before. Chances are you'll fight them again. So either stop the moral grandstanding, or quit."

"Is that an order?" he asked.

She wasn't amused. "Like I said Ryder. Playing the game of holier than thou only works when you don't have blood on your hands already." She turned to leave, paused, and looked back at him. "I know your record, Ryder. Only reason you're still in SecOps is that despite said record, Falco was worse. And because you've got plenty of experience fighting the natives even before Quaritch messed everything up."

Ryder frowned. "What's your point?"

"This time, don't get any ideas."

"Oh don't worry Ngouchi, I've got plenty of time to get ideas. Five years in fact."

"Five months," she said. "Don't you remember? You don't dream in cryo."

She headed off, leaving him alone in the bay. In the company of men, women, and one C-22 that would be shipped up to the _Heinlein _for a five year voyage. One of many that would be present from the outset, to re-establish humanity's foothold on Pandora. And this time, without any plans of being kicked off again. And for better or worse, he was going back with them. Because as terrible as it was to look forward, to look back…that was a sight far worse.

"Here be dragons," he murmured, before disappearing into the din.

* * *

_A/N_

_So awhile ago (at this time of writing) an image of the Sea Dragon was revealed for _Avatar 2_. Which led me to the question, why is the RDA even taking that back to Pandora? Here's a hint, it's hard to transport stuff into space. Assuming that the RDA is deploying in force (and the prequel comic series for the film indicates that it is), wouldn't you want to hold off on the sea exploration until you establish a beachhead?_

_Then again, I've always thought that the idea of _Avatar _sequels was misguided, but whatever the case, drabbled this up._


End file.
